As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders (J-B Leadership Network Series)As the world’s num­ber one speak­er on the sub­ject of humil­i­ty, I’d like to draw your atten­tion to a book in which I am a recur­ring char­ac­ter.

Earl Creps has just writ­ten Off-Road Dis­ci­plines, a book for church lead­ers try­ing to nav­i­gate all the change our cul­ture keeps throw­ing at us.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that I am quot­ed many times through­out the book. If you have nev­er read your­self quot­ed in a book before, let me assure that it can be dis­con­cert­ing.

There’s no way I can be objec­tive about this book. It’s writ­ten by a friend and almost all the recur­ring char­ac­ters are friends.

So I will sim­ply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snip­pets.

The His­to­ry Chan­nel recent­ly offered me part of the answer in a doc­u­men­tary about the researchers who devote their lives to dis­cov­er­ing Atlantis. These pas­sion­ate and sin­cere peo­ple con­sid­er them­selves con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in their field. They employ expen­sive, high-tech equip­ment and sac­ri­fice the respect of main­stream sci­ence to live on the per­pet­u­al verge of one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ies of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Pla­to, in this case), they spend years sur­vey­ing vast stretch­es of ocean in a quest to assem­ble clues to cat­a­clysmic events in the dis­tant past. The dis­dain of their sci­en­tif­ic peers only increas­es their fer­vor by mak­ing these faith­ful into pro­fes­sion­al mar­tyrs. Some­time before the last com­mer­cial on the TV pro­gram, I grasped the par­al­lel to the post-Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence of the Church: ancient texts, out­ra­geous the­o­ries, huge expense, per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and a pas­sion­ate devo­tion to things that mat­ter only to insid­ers. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that grip­ping no mat­ter who wrote it. Or con­sid­er this sim­ple evi­dence that demon­strates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a sur­vey of mag­a­zine indices I found that the first ref­er­ences to post­mod­ernism in Chris­t­ian peri­od­i­cals did not appear until four to thir­teen years after the first ref­er­ences are indexed in sec­u­lar jour­nals.

That’s the most con­crete, data-based illus­tra­tion I’ve ever seen of the cul­ture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phras­es that I love: “over­churched under­achiev­er” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “ortho­doxy creep” (a ten­den­cy to doc­tri­nal­ize every opin­ion).

Any­way, on to the impor­tant stuff: me.

My first appear­ance in the book is on page 45:

After hear­ing a talk sup­port­ed by Pow­er­Point, Glen (half my age) said polite­ly, “I thought you had a degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the sec­ond.

I am fea­tured again five pages lat­er: “Glen helps me with tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net.”

My best role, how­ev­er, comes in the chap­ter on humil­i­ty.

No, real­ly.

A [min­is­te­r­i­al] life rep­re­sent­ing an atti­tude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “block­er,” stand­ing in the way of the spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry rather than moti­vat­ing them to inves­ti­gate Jesus fur­ther. (page 83)

At last, I am por­trayed as the hum­ble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quot­ing from the book before I paint myself in an unflat­ter­ing light again. 😉

Oh, You Have One Of Those…

Dana has been pot­ty train­ing late­ly and she’s get­ting quite good at it. She’ll be play­ing with her toys, mind­ing her own busi­ness, when all of a sud­den she will leap to her feet and sneak/bolt towards the bath­room. After suc­cess­ful­ly deposit­ing sol­id mat­ter she will emit a tri­umphant cry: “I went poop!”

It’s quite charm­ing, real­ly.

Yes­ter­day one of our friends, Jen, vol­un­teered to take Dana in for the day while Paula was on bedrest. Things were going just fine until Dana pooped in her pants with­out show­ing the slight­est inter­est in Jen’s bath­room.

Dana need­ed some clean­ing to pre­vent a rash, and when Jen brought Dana to the bath­room Dana stared at the toi­let and then said slow­ly to Jen, “Oh, you have one of those.” 🙂

Assump­tions. As my friend Fras­er used to tell me in high school, the word assume makes an ass out of you and me.

For the record, I am assum­ing the ety­mol­o­gy of that com­ment traces back to don­keys and not to sphinc­ters, oth­er­wise it might be con­strued as a vul­gar­i­ty. My thoughts on curs­ing, vul­gar­i­ties, and exple­tives are a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, but the bot­tom line is that I try to avoid offend­ing peo­ple with the words I choose with­out becom­ing bound up in sil­ly rules (such as eras­ing the word ass from the dic­tio­nary because one of its uses is a syn­onym for pos­te­ri­or). Plus the ensu­ing pun (result­ing from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of poop and hiney) would be too awful even for me.

Back to assump­tions: Dana assumes Jen has no pot­ty and so she excretes wher­ev­er she hap­pens to be. I assume God has no opin­ion about my deci­sions and so I don’t pray to receive guid­ance.

Bad assump­tions lead to stinky sit­u­a­tions.

Paula in Hospital, Everything OK

Yes­ter­day Paula began to feel con­trac­tions, and her doc­tor decid­ed to put under obser­va­tion in the hos­pi­tal.

She gave Paula some med­i­cine to stop her con­trac­tions, and so far it seems to be work­ing. She esti­mates there’s still a 60% chance that our baby will go full term.

In any event, it looks as though Paula will be on bed rest right up until Baby Davis appears some­time in the next few weeks. Or days. 😉

We’re already at the point where Paula can deliv­er with very lit­tle dan­ger to the baby, so this is more about opti­miz­ing con­di­tions rather than try­ing to pre­serve the life of our child.

Bot­tom line: Paula is fine, baby is fine, Dana is con­fused, Dad­dy is fraz­zled.

Helping Teens Transition To College

I stum­bled upon this quote today:

Every autumn I have a spate of let­ters from fond par­ents, teach­ers, guardians, and mon­i­tors, appeal­ing to me to fol­low up on such and such a young­ster who is away from home at col­lege for the first time, and who has to be hunt­ed, fol­lowed, shad­owed, inter­cept­ed and dri­ven to Chris­t­ian meet­ings. I have scarce­ly ever known this des­per­ate tech­nique to work. I under­stand the pan­ic of par­ents and guardians, but it is too late then to try high pres­sure tac­tics. Prayer, exam­ple and pre­cept, in that order, are the means of bring­ing up chil­dren and young folk in the faith. Nor will high pres­sure tac­tics and brain­wash­ing tech­niques avail when young folk have gone off on their own. Some young folk, alas, will have their fling and sow their wild oats, and come at last to heel, sad­ly, like the prodi­gal son. It is where Chris­tians pathet­i­cal­ly put their trust in exter­nal tech­niques and arti­fi­cial strat­a­gems that young folk go astray. Noth­ing takes the place of the real­ism of holy liv­ing and secret wrestling before God in prayer for our young­sters. We must com­mit them to God so utter­ly that we dare not inter­fere or tam­per with their pre­cious souls.

(William Still, late Pas­tor of Gilcom­ston South Church, Aberdeen, Scot­land)

Well said.

Daddy Can’t Handle The Truth

While eat­ing break­fast this morn­ing, Dana said, “Your bot­tom is sag­gy, Dad­dy.”

Bewil­dered, I think I said some­thing on the order of, “Huh?”

At which point Dana began chant­i­ng, “You can’t han­dle the truth!”

Over and over.

I did­n’t think I’d have to put up with this sort of mock­ery until her ado­les­cence. I cer­tain­ly did­n’t expect it from a two year old.

I need to tell my ego to buck­le its seat­belt — it’s going to be a rocky ride from here on out.

New NET Bible website is awesome

The NET Bible web­site just got an over­haul and it is awe­some. Check it out (be sure to mouse over the foot­notes). And they seem to have renamed the web por­tion of their project NEXT Bible: http://nextbible.org

A Georgetown Suggestion

I found this on GetRe­li­gion and was so tick­led I thought I’d pass it along here:

what would hap­pen if lead­ers of the kicked-off-cam­pus George­town Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship applied to the lead­er­ship of the Jesuit school for per­mis­sion to hold a pub­lic forum this week in which stu­dents and fac­ul­ty would be asked to read and then peace­ful­ly dis­cuss the text of Pope Bene­dict XVI’s actu­al speech text on faith, rea­son and jihad?

Per­haps the event could be held at the well-endowed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Cen­ter for Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian Under­stand­ing on the cam­pus?

Just think­ing out loud, you know. I am sure the cam­pus admin­is­tra­tion would wel­come such a request by the oust­ed Protes­tant groups to orga­nize an ecu­meni­cal and even inter­faith event focus­ing on the intel­lec­tu­al thought of a man that George­town must real­ize is in the main­stream of Catholic intel­lec­tu­al life.

🙂

I don’t think it’s going to hap­pen, but it’s fun to fan­ta­size about.

Also see my pre­vi­ous thoughts on the evan­gel­i­cal evic­tion from George­town.

5 Rare Gems for Reaching High School and College Students

I just fin­ished Don­ny Rober­son­’s 5 Rare Gems for Reach­ing High School and Col­lege Stu­dents. It’s an excel­lent (and brief) guide to cam­pus min­istry.

You should espe­cial­ly read this if you are in col­lege min­istry and are a male over 30 — he makes some insight­ful obser­va­tions you won’t find any­where else.

His “5 Gems” are real­ly just mus­ings on five big top­ics: under­stand­ing your stu­dents’ fam­i­lies, being cre­ative, build­ing qual­i­ty rela­tion­ships, being per­sis­tent, and lis­ten­ing effec­tive­ly.

From every gem save one I learned some­thing that I’m look­ing for­ward to try­ing this year — and the book only cost me $3.

So go order it already.

Worst Places To Be When The Big One Strikes

Liv­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia Bay Area, my thoughts turn peri­od­i­cal­ly to the Big One.

Recent­ly I was won­der­ing where the worst places to be in an earth­quake would be (oth­er than in open-heart surgery or some­thing else that is already life-or-death).

Quick thoughts that I had:

  • Get­ting a hair­cut
  • Walk­ing among the stacks of a library
  • In a port-a-pot­ty

I’m sure there are lots of more hor­ri­ble places to be in an earth­quake, but these are the ones that strike par­tic­u­lar fear into my heart.

Who Will Let The Dog Out?

Duane Chap­man, aka Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, was arrest­ed ear­li­er today for vio­lat­ing Mex­i­can law while track­ing down a wealthy ser­i­al rapist.

I have to con­fess that I’m bummed. Boun­ty hunt­ing is a noble pro­fes­sion that helps our legal sys­tem func­tion more effec­tive­ly, and Dog was always enter­tain­ing. Plus I just learned that he’s the kid of an Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ary (Bar­bara Chap­man, whom I nev­er met and who is now deceased) which gives me a cer­tain kin­dred affec­tion for him.

I under­stand that he broke Mex­i­can law, but sure­ly there are high­er pri­or­i­ties for the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem than arrest­ing some­one who helps catch fugi­tives. Almost any­thing rather than devot­ing effort to extra­dit­ing an Amer­i­can boun­ty hunter for catch­ing a vile man who had done despi­ca­ble things.

The one thing about the reports so far that real­ly puz­zles me is that the Chap­mans evi­dent­ly broke bail them­selves. Maybe they know some­thing about the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem that I don’t, but giv­en their line of work that seems pret­ty stu­pid.